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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23646283">solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/malicegeres/pseuds/malicegeres'>malicegeres</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens - Neil Gaiman &amp; Terry Pratchett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>1920s, Canon - Book, Demon Summoning, Gen, Historical, Occult, This Is Just Gonna Be Kind of A Romp</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 21:42:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,556</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23646283</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/malicegeres/pseuds/malicegeres</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Munitions dealer and aspiring pioneer of the occult arts, Midas Whitman, has summoned Crowley for his dark experiments with the paranormal. In his race to escape, Crowley finds an unlikely ally in Whitman's eight-year-old son.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>60</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Translation of the title: "It is a comfort to the unfortunate to have had companions in woe." I.E., Misery loves company. And you are all accompanying my misery as I add yet another multichapter fic to my roster.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Midas Whitman had studied the classics. Albertus Magnus, John Dee, Madame Blavatsky, he'd read them all, and he knew what occultism was about. None of this faffing about with tarot cards or holding hands around floating tables, no. It was the twentieth century, and man had well and truly proved his mastery over the four elements of earth. Now it was time for him to master the element of spirit. And not just the spirits of the human dead or any of the minor demons listed in <em>The Lesser Key of Solomon</em>; no, Midas was going to summon a genuine fallen angel and enslave its will to his own.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It had taken him years of trial and error and devastating failure, but he hadn't become the richest man in Wembley by giving up when things were difficult.<a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a><a id="return1" name="return1"></a> Every failure was a lesson, and it had all brought him to his final conclusion: a clear, precise summoning circle using what he hoped—prayed—was a genuine demonic sigil. It had taken him the better part of two years to obtain it. He'd heard tell of a scrupulous solicitor who'd sold his soul in the seventeenth century and demanded a copy of the demon’s contract with signatures for his records. After hounding the man's descendants for ages, Midas was finally allowed to search their attic and copy down the symbol he saw written next to the solicitor's name.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He chalked the swirling, serpentine pattern into the circle, and he smiled. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Crowley was really enjoying the nineteen-twenties, for the same reason all the humans around him were enjoying the nineteen-twenties. Namely, the latter half of the nineteen-tens had been completely bloody awful, and any amount of time put between the War and the present was worth celebrating. Not that it had all been bad. Music had taken a turn for the thrilling, and you could even play it at home on a gramophone—or sing it over a telephone, if you had enough drink in you and someone to call. After millennia of struggling on horseback, he wasn’t certain he trusted vehicles that were entirely horseless, but after a few country drives with his friends from the clubs too seedy for Aziraphale’s tastes he was warming up to the idea. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Sometimes, he wished Aziraphale’s tastes were a little baser. Crowley liked his little bands of misfits, generally, but sometimes, when everyone was paired off out on the dance floor or in secluded corners of the club, he thought it might be nice to have someone familiar around. But more than twenty years after Crowley had woken up, Aziraphale still had his own life and community to tend to, and so Crowley was alone a lot more than he really wanted to be.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">That night, everyone he’d come in with seemed quite occupied with dancing and sneaking off into corners to do God knew what else, so he sat at the bar nursing more drinks than he cared to count. It wasn’t that he was being irresponsible—Irving the barman was a good judge of that, as when you’d had too much to drink he’d simply hand you your bill and stop trying to engage you in conversation—but a more honest, sober Crowley might have to admit that this wasn’t exactly a <em>fun</em> night out on the town, even if he wasn’t making a fool of himself just yet.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">When Irving turned his back to fix yet another cocktail,<a href="#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a><a id="return2" name="return2"></a> Crowley felt something tingle. He dismissed it at first, drunk as he was. Even when his vision began to swim, he wasn’t concerned beyond an idle thought that perhaps he should hand Irving his bill after this. But then swimming became a vortex of light and dark, and he felt the bar fall away beneath him. He was floating up and falling down all at once, and he knew before he touched back down onto solid ground what was happening.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The world came rushing back, this time in the form of a bare-walled attic, its only adornment being a table covered in several stacks of books. The dim light of the circle of candles surrounding him illuminated an array of symbols that made his already swimming head do flip at the end of its swim lane. Then he recognized his sigil, and he raised his head to face the man standing before him.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Are you serious?” he moaned.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The man’s eyes flashed with unbridled glee, although his lips moved only enough to twitch the corners of his waxy little John Gilbert mustache. He was a handsome man with the sort of cared-for face that could have been in his late thirties or in his early fifties. He wore a billowing, embroidered robe over a well-tailored suit, and he stared at Crowley over the cracked leather volume in his hand like a hunter whose hound had just laid a dying fox at his feet.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“The demon Crawly, I presume,” he said smoothly. “I’d offer to shake your hand, only I put so much <em>work</em> designing a circle to keep you in, and I'd rather not risk you pulling me in with you.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Crowley tried desperately to sober up, but when he reached for his power he found that it was… suspended, somehow. Just out of reach. Being a demon, Crowley had very little experience pretending not to be drunk. If a situation called for him to act sober, he would simply sober up and then drink his way back to equilibrium once his business was concluded. When a demon was summoned, it was always best practice to behave with as much dignity as possible so the human who’d trapped you didn’t get any ideas about what liberties they could take with you or your power.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He stood up straight, pushed his shoulders back, and said, “Sssss’Crowley, actually.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The man frowned. “Is it?” He glanced at his book. “I thought my pronunciation was—“</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“<em>Anyway</em>,” Crowley continued, hoping the swaying he felt himself doing was only in his head, “why have you cinnamon—ssssssummon— Whaddyou want?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Are you drunk?” asked the man.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He scoffed. “No! No, don’t be ridiculous.” He looked briefly for something to lean on casually before remembering he was trapped in a magic circle, so he settled for sticking his hands lazily in his pocket. “Now, c’mon. Let’s get this over with.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The man was unmoved. “Was it alcohol you drank, or is there something else that’s intoxicating to demons? Blessed objects, perhaps, or human blood?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Crowley stared at him. “Really? You get a real, live demon in front of you and <em>that’s</em> what you want to ask me about? You want my sodding infernal cocktail recommendations?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He gave Crowley an indulgent smile. “If you have them, Lord Crowley.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“It was rum an’ gin,” he said dryly. “An’ m’not a lord. Now, c’mon, let’s get this over with. You want to sell me your soul? You want money? Love? What?”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Nothing so base as all that.” The man put his hands behind his back and stood proudly. “If you’re earthbound enough to be drinking rum and gin, my dear—well, if you’re not a lord, I suppose Mr. Crowley will do—but perhaps you’ve heard my name in your travels on Earth. I am Midas Whitman.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Crowley flipped through the address book at the back of his mind and pinged a name he’d heard bandied about in the lead-up to the war. It was a name that had come up in the odd business meeting Crowley showed up at so he could show Hell he’d been in the room while the wealthy of Europe plunged the world into war, but other than writing it off as a soul he could claim to his superiors without putting in any work of his own, he hadn’t formed much of an impression of it. If that name had popped up in London since, Crowley had been too busy hanging around humans who could make him forget names like that to notice.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“‘Fraid it’s not ringing any bells,” he said, and he was pleased to see a little crack form in Whitman’s cool veneer.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“I suppose, considering the state you’re in, you concern yourself more with the matters of the idle than the industrious.” He took a calming breath and straightened himself out. “It may surprise you to learn that I am, first and foremost, a man of science.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Crowley wished that it did, but the robe put him in mind of the <em>last</em> time summoning demons was in vogue. Enterprising young academics fresh from the university lecture halls and the coffee houses of English cities would perfect their calculus and geometry in the afternoon, map the stars in the evening, and (after a few drinks) commune with the dead and demon until the daylight came. It had been a real hassle tamping down the spread of his sigil, and with the rise of the new occult movement he’d figured it was only a matter of time before someone found it again and tried to do ‘science’ with it.<a href="#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a><a id="return3" name="return3"></a></span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">For a time he zoned out from Whitman’s speech as he droned on about the legitimacy of the occult as a field of study. At first Crowley made a show of nodding along, but eventually he realized there was no reason to make that argument to a demon you’d just summoned. Whitman was addressing a crowd of invisible naysayers, completely oblivious to the miraculous fruit of his machinations suppressing a yawn in front of him.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Then the speech took a turn. He felt it before he heard it, honing in on Whitman as he said “—I am no foolish Faustus looking to sell my soul.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Crowley blinked. “Fat lot of good I’m going to do you, then.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Whitman glowered at him. “It would serve you well to pay attention when I am talking to you, demon. As I was <em>saying</em>, too much of the occult is based in tradition. Why should we summon the same demons we’ve been summoning for centuries? Why, in the twentieth century, should we sell our souls to get what we desire? We’ve mastered steam and fire, we’ve harnessed electricity, we’ve conquered every continent on the planet. God made the Earth for us, and He gave us the tools to trap enemies of His such as yourself. Why should you not have the same utility to humanity as coal or rubber? You are here, Mr. Crowley, because I am going to find a way to get you to do my bidding without forfeiting my place in eternal paradise.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He had to admit, the man finally had his attention. After he got his jaw off the floor, he laughed nervously. “I hear ‘please’ is the magic word.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Whitman flashed him a grin full of teeth. “I doubt every demon is so accommodating as you.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“You’d be surprised,” Crowley babbled. “I mean, we’ve all got jobs to do, lives of our own to get on with, right? We haven’t got time to be at humans’ beck and call day or night or else we’d just be dropping our sigils wherever we go. If you think about it—“</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">“Enough.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “I suppose if it was going to go this smoothly, the trade-off would be dealing with a drunken demon.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Crowley considered pointing out that he didn’t generally plan his life around being summoned, and it was Whitman who’d cut him off from his ability to rectify his drunkenness, but he bit his tongue. Crowley had met a lot of Whitmans in his time, powerful men who justified their power in ways that reduced the world to their playthings. They were always the first souls to volunteer themselves off the rack in Hell, and they proceeded to rise as high as a dead human could in the ranks. Their arrogance often landed them right back on the rack beneath another soul like them in due time, but that was only a small comfort. When he said he didn’t want anything as simple as wealth or love, Crowley believed him. A human like that couldn’t just be selfish for its own sake. He had to be <em>great</em>, and to a human like him greatness meant bending the laws of the universe in directions they weren’t meant to go until they broke.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Crowley didn’t think of himself as particularly powerful. If Lucifer was the Morningstar, he was little more than a comet that would fizzle out the moment it hit a planet’s atmosphere. To him, his power wasn’t so much a ‘power’ as an ability like moving a muscle or using a pencil to write words. It was just different when a human got control over your powers, was the thing. It was true that Crowley had an unfair advantage over humans, but he also didn’t have the same goals as humans. Most of the selfish uses he had for his powers were harmless, and some of the more frightening abilities he had like hypnotism and mind reading were things he could only use in the service of nudging human free will toward evil. Going around hypnotizing people into doing what he wanted all willy nilly would have defeated his very purpose on Earth.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">But Whitman only served himself, and with the sorts of ambitions a man like him had there was no telling what he’d do if he found a way to control a demon without selling his soul first. He was bound for Hell either way, Crowley was sure of that, but he’d live a long, happy life free of consequence before he realized it. And, with that attitude—not to mention all the ulterior motives that came with being a munitions dealer—if he succeeded there was no telling what things he might try to make Crowley do, or what sorts of people he might pass on his discoveries to.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Midas Whitman sighed and shrugged his robe off of his shoulders. “I suppose the only thing for it is to wait until you’re more... composed.” His nostrils flared with distaste as he lay the robe on the table. “Take some time to dry out. I’ll come back tomorrow.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">The door shut behind him, and for a time Crowley just stood there, stunned. It had been a long time since he’d felt this trapped, and in six thousand years of memory he struggled to find another time he’d felt this trapped by a human.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"><a id="footnote1" name="footnote1"></a><a href="#return1">1</a> He'd become the richest man in Wembley by outliving the third richest man in Wembley (his father), inheriting the third richest man in Wembley’s fortune, and investing that fortune in munitions in the lead-up to the War.</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1"><a id="footnote2" name="footnote2"></a><a href="#return2">2</a> Crowley didn’t know it, but it was something that could be found on <a href="https://euvs-vintage-cocktail-books.cld.bz/1930-The-Savoy-Cocktail-Book/68/">page 69</a> of the Savoy Cocktail Book in some eight years’ time. Irving, for his part, only meant serving him the mint, lime, and gin concoction as encouragement to order something other than back-to-back mojitos. </span>
</p><p class="p3">
  <span class="s1"><a id="footnote3" name="footnote3"></a><a href="#return3">3</a> He had been rather hoping it would be the other A. Crowley who wound up summoning him, just so he could give him a piece of his mind. Everyone from Aziraphale to people he’d just met had been making jokes for the last two decades, and he was getting sick of it.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks so much for reading! Follow me on Tumblr at <a href="https://crowleyraejepsen.tumblr.com/">crowleyraejepsen</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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